Chapter 378 | I Want to Watch Her Try

Chapter 378: 378 | I Want to Watch Her Try

"Everything’s a metaphor to you," Sofia said, with the weary patience of someone who had heard this observation many times before.

"That’s because everything is a metaphor, baby girl." Isabella reached into the fort and adjusted Detective Blueberry’s position slightly. "Even things that seem literal are standing in for something else we can’t quite name."

"So what’s the fort standing in for?"

Isabella’s eyes found Jordan’s, and the contact lasted exactly one beat too long to be casual. "Safety or connection. It’s the temporary structures we build to protect the things that matter to us, knowing they won’t last forever but building them anyway because the building is the point."

Jordan’s mouth went dry.

Kumiko had recovered enough to lift her head from his shoulder, and he could feel her attention shifting between him and Isabella with the particular awareness of someone who had finally caught up to what was happening. Chloe’s presence at the table registered as a constant peripheral weight, her silence more eloquent than any words she might have spoken.

"Okay," Jordan said, standing up and breaking the moment with deliberate force. "Fort’s done. Princess needs to inspect her kingdom, and I need to use the restroom."

He didn’t wait for responses. He just walked, navigating between tables until the ambient darkness of the restaurant swallowed him and the fiber-optic stars overhead stopped feeling romantic and started feeling like surveillance equipment tracking his retreat.

The men’s room was blessedly empty. Jordan locked himself in a stall, pulled out his phone, and stared at the notifications he’d been ignoring all evening.

Three messages from Eliza. One from his mother. A System notification he definitely didn’t want to deal with right now.

His phone buzzed with a new message. Chloe.

Fireworks in 15. Sofia wants to watch from your shoulders. Isabella asked if that was okay. I said yes. Come back.

Jordan typed a response, deleted it, typed another one.

On my way.

He left the bathroom and walked back through the restaurant, past couples sharing desserts and families wrangling children and groups of friends taking photos of food they’d forget about by tomorrow, and when he emerged into the New Orleans Square atmosphere with its gas lamps and jazz music and manufactured Southern charm, the first thing he saw was Kumiko holding Sofia’s hand and pointing at the castle in the distance while Chloe and Isabella stood side by side, their conversation too quiet to overhear but their body language communicating things Jordan filed away for later analysis.

Two women who had no business getting along, finding common ground over something he couldn’t see from here.

That was either very good or very bad, and he genuinely couldn’t determine which.

"Big boy!" Sofia spotted him and released Kumiko’s hand, running toward him with the wobbly determination of a four-year-old in too-large shoes. "Fireworks! Up up up!"

Jordan scooped her up before she could collide with his knees, lifting her in one smooth motion until she sat on his shoulders with her Belle dress bunching around her legs and her small hands gripping his hair for balance. She giggled with pure delight, the sound bright and uncomplicated in a way that made Jordan’s chest tight for reasons he didn’t want to examine.

"I can see everything!" Sofia announced. "I can see the castle and the mountain and the—" She gasped. "Mama! There’s a princess! A real princess!"

Jordan followed her pointing finger to a Cinderella character taking photos near the hub, and Sofia’s entire body vibrated with excitement against his skull.

Isabella materialized at his side, her shoulder brushing his arm as she looked up at her daughter with an expression of tired, overwhelming love. "That’s Cinderella, baby. Remember? We saw her at breakfast."

"But she moved! She was inside and now she’s outside!"

"She’s allowed to move. She lives here."

"That’s so cool." Sofia’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. "She lives in a castle and she can go wherever she wants."

Kumiko appeared on Jordan’s other side, her sequined Minnie ears slightly askew and her pink notebook clutched to her chest. Chloe completed the formation a moment later, standing just behind Jordan’s right shoulder with her hand finding the small of his back in a gesture that felt more possessive than affectionate.

The five of them stood there in the manufactured twilight, waiting for fireworks that would cost the park approximately fifty thousand dollars per night to produce, surrounded by ten thousand strangers all seeking the same manufactured magic, and Jordan realized with sudden clarity that he was happy.

Not content. Not satisfied. Not managing acceptable circumstances.

Happy.

The word felt foreign in his head, like a language he’d learned theoretically but never spoken aloud, and he tested it carefully against the reality of the moment. Sofia’s weight on his shoulders. Kumiko’s warmth at his side. Chloe’s hand on his back. Isabella’s proximity, complicated and dangerous and thrilling in ways he couldn’t afford to explore.

Happy.

"The show starts in three minutes," Chloe said, her voice low enough that only Jordan could hear. "Isabella invited us to watch from the Grand Californian patio. Better view. Fewer crowds."

"That’s our hotel."

"Yes."

"So we’d be going back early."

"Yes."

Jordan turned his head slightly, catching Chloe’s profile in the ambient light. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes held something he recognized from their first coffee date, when she’d been Calypso and he’d been a client and neither of them had known the other’s secret. Calculation. Strategy. The particular focus of someone who had identified an opportunity and was deciding whether to exploit it.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

Chloe’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "I’m thinking Isabella is fascinating. I’m thinking her research on social dynamics could be useful. I’m thinking she looks at you like she wants to take you apart and study the pieces."

Her hand pressed slightly harder against his back. "I’m thinking I want to watch her try."